


Jacob Have I Loved

by skidmo



Category: History Boys (2006)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-03
Updated: 2011-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-20 23:47:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skidmo/pseuds/skidmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Posner's done his research. He's going to get laid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jacob Have I Loved

It doesn't happen how he thought it would.

Or rather, it does happen how he thought it would, but it doesn't happen how he'd hoped it would.

He's tired of talking to the boys from Cutlers and finding they've all got girlfriends, all been spending their weekends at clubs or parties, moving on without him, learning all the things they don't teach in lectures. (He'd tried it once, having a girlfriend. Someone he met in the bookshop. She was nice, and they had a lot in common, but even she knew he wasn't really interested, no matter how hard he'd tried to be. They're still friends. She gets him tickets to all the theatre productions she's in, and he dutifully plays her date to social functions when she doesn't have someone else.)

But he's tired of it.

So he decides to change it. He decides to get laid.

On his own, because who could he trust to help him with this. The thought of asking even Scripps to go with him is mortifying.

He's done his reading, though, studied up on it. And he's decided Oxford is not the place for this. It will have to be London.

The logistics are not difficult to work out. He buys himself a train ticket, down to London on Friday after his last lecture and back again on Saturday. He doesn't have much cash, but he doesn't need it. If things go to plan, he'll have a place to stay the night, and other than that he only needs enough to cover drinks for the night and whatever it will cost to get in.

He's made a plan. He's going to get laid.

***

He only just makes the train, dropping into a seat by the window, curling up, his forehead resting against the glass. He should sleep now, while he can, if he can. There's a group of girls across the aisle, giggling, whispering, and Posner does his best to ignore them. Eventually he drifts off, jerking awake when the train comes to a stop in London.

He's never been to London, so he stops at a little shop, picks up a sandwich and a Coke and takes the Tube to Trafalgar Square, setting up on the steps to the National Gallery to eat a quick dinner and work on the essay he needs to finish for Monday.

After that, it's a matter of killing time. It's too late for a library or museum to be open, and too early to go to the club yet. He wanders for a while, making his way toward Earl's Court. It isn't difficult to find. He's got a map of London he picked up in the bookshop in Oxford. It's still too early, though, so he finds himself a pub nearby and buys himself a drink.

***

The bouncer almost doesn't let him in. He looks at again and again between the ID and Posner until someone behind him in line yells, “Oh, let him in! Not his fault he's got a baby face.”

His ears burn as he ducks inside.

He doesn't even look around until he's bought himself another beer and settled into a corner, dark but not too dark.

Looking around doesn't make this any less difficult. It's not the sort of place he's ever been, though he's been invited along with the others a few times. He isn't used to the music: loud, thumping, until he can feel it in his veins. And he isn't used to the people either, so many of them packed into that space, all male, most of them quite attractive, many of them missing key pieces of clothing.

(He's never thought much about his clothes. He wears what's clean and comfortable. Tonight it's just a blue polo shirt and grey trousers. Looking around him, he feels drab and unlovely. Unloved.

Unembraced.)

After an hour or so, the club is even more packed, and he can't stay away from everyone anymore. One or two men try to talk to him, but he...can't.

He seizes up, unsure what to talk about, not even a quick quote coming to his lips in response to their flirtations. What does one do when one is flirted with? Gracie Fields is no preparation, and he suspects Hector didn't have the remedy for this particular situation.

When he's about to give up, call it a night, sleep in the train station until he can go home and forget all about this, a hand reaches over his shoulder, small white pill held in it.

“You look like you need this.”

He shouldn't, and he knows it. He's not so naïve, not so innocent that he doesn't know that much. But he doesn't care anymore. He's had just enough beer to allow him to be reckless, and without glancing over his shoulder at the offerer, he takes the pill, pops it in his mouth, and washes it down with the rest of his beer.

It takes too long to kick in, and Posner isn't sure he can keep up a conversation that long, but the stranger doesn't seem to mind. He just grins when Posner turns to face him (older, but not by much, dark in a way that doesn't remind him of Dakin but probably should) and takes Posner's hand, tugging him out to the dance floor.

Jake, his name is, and Posner only gets that much from him before nothing much sinks in anymore.

The music moves through him, and Posner dances in that unfamiliar wave of lust and tidal motion. There are hands, first on his shirt, tugging it off and tossing it aside, and then on his skin, on his hips, on his ass. And then there is bare skin, pressed against his, warm, firm, male skin, body, arms, chest, pressed against him, drawing him in, moving with him, more hands than can belong to Jake, Jacob, Jake...

Someone is kissing him, and it's...perfect.

And perfectly hazy. Lovely, warm, soft and desperate and wicked and sweet, and there are still to many hands, but somehow that's right.

(He thinks of Akthar and Hindus and the many-armed goddess, and he remembers that Akthar is Muslim, and he doesn't know what the goddess's name is.)

Someone else is kissing him, or it may be the same person, or it may be more people than he can keep track of, but it is JakeJacobJake whose hands end up on his hips, leading him out of the club, snatching his jacket from the back of the chair he was sitting on once before he let himself be drugged by a stranger and kissed by several or one or perhaps none at all.

JakeJacobJake takes him home, and more clothes are removed, and Posner is terrified of what must be coming, what he's read is coming, what he wanted just a few hours ago to be coming, but it's too late to back out, and anyway, JakeJacobJake only drops to his knees, Jacob Jacob Jacob have I loved and Jacob had twelve sons and Jacob fathered a nation loved and cursed by God, but this Jacob isn't even Jewish because if there is one thing David knows it is that even the least observant of Jews doesn't let that detail slide, and there's a part of his mind that recites the Sh'ma Yisrael and a part of his mind that feels guilty and a part of his mind that wishes it were JonJonathanJon so it would be DavidandJonathan and they could be hiding their love from JonJonathanJon's father the king and David would soothe him with a song and …

Jacob Jacob Jacob have I loved is too good at this, and David who wished for a Jonathan to love can't think clearly enough to warn him but Jacob have I loved doesn't seem to mind and when it's over and when David's mind is more wrung out than it already was, JakeJacobJake only pulls him into bed and David's hand finds the heated flesh that marks him a gentile (Esau have I hated) and his brain is working enough to manage this familiar motion on an unfamiliar prick and JakeJacobJake yells something that is not the Sh'ma Yisrael but feels more like a blessing than anything David without his Jonathan ever heard at temple.

***

He panics a moment when he first wakes.

This isn't his dorm room, and it isn't his room at home. It isn't even Scripps' sofa where he sometimes crashes after a late night revising session.

His head pounds, and...

And he isn't alone, and he isn't dressed, and both facts hit him at the same time, really, because there's a warm arm around his waist, pulling him back against another warm body that is equally naked, and through the haze of the memory of last night he pulls, “Jake.”

“Just Jake now?” comes the voice from behind him, soft, amused at his ear. “What happened to 'Jacob have I loved'?”

Posner just blushes, turning his face against the pillow.

There's a pause and then a soft kiss is pressed to the back of his neck and Jake says, “I've got to piss. Back in a mo.”

Posner waits until he hears the bathroom door shut to get up, quickly finding what's left of his clothes and pulling them on. He contemplates leaving a note, but in the end he just gets out as fast as he can.

When he gets to the train station and puts his hand into his pocket to discover a scrap of paper along with his ticket, he pulls it out and frowns down at the hastily scrawled phone number.

He doesn't intend to call, but he doesn't throw it away either.

Part of his mind recites the Sh'ma Yisrael, and part of it still wishes for his Jonathan.

 _fin_


End file.
